Criticism mounts against Modi over exam irregularities amid job shortage

PRAYAGRAJ, INDIA:

India’s opposition parties and the country’s students lashed out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new government on Thursday over irregularities in recent government tests for admission to colleges and government teaching posts.

Modi unexpectedly lost his parliamentary majority in a general election that ended this month, in part because of unemployment, especially among young people, exacerbated by frequent leaks of test papers for government jobs that many Indians crave for security.

Relying on volatile allies to run his third government, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party will next face local elections in the states of Haryana and Maharashtra where it fared badly in the national elections.

The government late on Wednesday canceled an exam held earlier this week for university and college professors and doctoral courses, based on early evidence from a government cybercrime analysis team that “the integrity of the aforementioned exam may have been compromised.” It said in a statement that the Federal Bureau of Investigation will investigate the matter.

The Ministry of Education said it also sought a police report on “some alleged irregularities” in the conduct of another test for admission to undergraduate medical programs in May.

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The main opposition Congress party, riding high after its better-than-expected election result, said the “Modi government has destroyed the country’s education and recruitment system”.

“There is huge pressure on our students. There is a lot of unemployment in the country,” Rahul Gandhi, the highest-profile Congress leader, told a press conference on Thursday.

“The youth of India has no way. The youth of India has nowhere to go. It is a deep national crisis!”

Other opposition parties also criticized the government.

India’s unemployment among 15- to 24-year-olds was 18 percent last year, according to International Labor Organization estimates, higher than in neighbors such as Bangladesh and Pakistan. Overall, unemployment in India is currently 8.5%, according to the private think tank Center for Monitoring the Indian Economy, compared to around 6% before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Pankaj Yadav, 24, was one of nearly a million students affected by the cancellation. He sat for a PhD in political science for the third time and hoped to clear it, lining him up to eventually land a university teaching job.

“As students, we can only protest,” Yadav said in the city of Prayagraj, where he attended school for the exams. “I thought my paper went well. If I can get somewhere in the Ph.D., I will be eligible for assistant professorships at a university.”

In Delhi, dozens of students holding placards with words such as “shame on the authorities” protested outside the education ministry as police led some of them away. The Congress also called for demonstrations in some states.

The ministry said it was “committed to ensuring the sanctity of examinations and protecting the interests of students” and that those found guilty would be punished.